How teens become terrorists

10:13 PM,
Apr. 26, 2013

Written by

Russell Razzaque

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was only 19 years old when he allegedly planned and carried out one of the worst acts of terror on U.S. soil since 9/11. This, however, is actually not an uncommon age for radicalization. In fact, a number of suicide bombers and terrorist convicts were radicalized at around exactly this time; Hasib Hussain, for example, one of the London 7/7 bombers of 2004, was 18. This is when the existential wound that has been festering since childhood is most vulnerable to external forces.

Radical Islamist ideology is a poison disguised as a cure. In the research I conducted across a range ...